


A View of Green Hills

by paperiuni



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Crew as Family, Drama, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Memory, Mentions of PSTD, mentions of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:13:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2054961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meeting of two old friends stirs memories of a war fought long ago: When hope is in short supply, you take heart in the smallest things, find places to rest where you can, and build families out of the most unlikely pieces. And you remember them, lest you forget yourself. Art by downontheupside.</p><p>(This fic is beloved of googlebots and therefore has a ridiculous hit count. Sorry about that?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A View of Green Hills

**Author's Note:**

> I'd known for a while that I wanted to write crew fic--some kind of proper ensemble story. It noodled about in my brain, and I'd almost filed it under Never To Be Finished, because it felt like a bigger project than I had time for. Then the MEBB came along quite providentially, gave me the kick I needed, and the story gelled around the framing narrative.
> 
> So, I would like to thank, first and foremost, my marvellous artist, downontheupside, whose enthusiasm was infectious and whose patience was saintly when I tried to juggle work and story edits. She brought my story to life with her art, and it was a joy and a privilege to watch her progress--not to mention seeing the lovely, lovely final pieces. She a kind and generous soul and I'm glad I met her via this challenge. You can see all her art [here on her tumblr](http://downontheupside.tumblr.com/mebb2014-27).
> 
> A hearty thank you to my beta, Nadat, who weeded out my anachronisms and needlessly vague descriptions and was, as always, a pinnacle of good advice. Thanks also to Ten, who is magic and suggested the central theme after seeing the wobbly first draft, to 'Pea, who spoke words of encouragement though this isn't even her fandom, and to Umbralpilot, for constant company during the writing.
> 
> And last but not least, thank you to bioticbooty and Azzy for running the MEBB and for their patience and kindness when I needed extensions. Exemplary mods and gentlepersons, the both of them.
> 
> You can click on the illustrations to see the full-sized versions.

* * *

Past the unnumbered flock of shouting children in the garden, she winds her way up to the house on the hill. The garden isn't large, but a suitable hillock juts out on the colony outskirts upon which to have built an airy, sunny house. It is a rare splash of green and light after her trip, mostly spent in stuffed transports and lastly, on the back of a shaking hovercraft that runs the final leg of the journey to the colony.

She finds the door open and enters, upon the wordless compact they all kept with each other. Everyone that is left--no matter the cluster, the star, the planet, the station, if the door is unlocked, you are welcome. Here, she knows where she is going.

Her friend is seated by the broad window, curtains of lacy fabric keeping the sun at bay but allowing the clement breeze to enter. In her lap is an actual book, bound in cardboard covers, a relic in their era of datapage and extranet. They both know well the value of old things. Her friend sets the volume aside, her often cramping hands pressing the cover closed.

They share a solid embrace, though she holds her friend up and helps her--unobtrusively, lest she complain--back into the chair.

"You look good." An irrepressible smile quirks her mouth. "At least as good as I did when we first met."

Ashley graces her with a husky, rolling laugh. "For the Shadow Broker, you're a damn poor liar, T'Soni."

"That was why I gave up the title, remember?" It isn't, but Ashley knows the true reasons. Liara pulls another chair for herself. "You're here again." 

"Best light in the house. Guess that near-sightedness finally caught up with me."

"What's the book?" One of the uncounted many. " 'Robert A. Heinlein'," she reads on the cover. "No poetry this time?"

"There's poetry. Pass me that." She sets the book in Ashley's hands, and her fingers steady around the heavy, well-leafed volume. "I was just remembering. Sure this is the best view in the house, but there's been a few others in our time."

"Like on Starboard Observation?" Liara leans sideways into a corner of the armchair, like a girl on the cusp of a story.

"Read my mind."

* * *

No one really knew how it began. How did a habit form, a custom solidify? How did you build up those secret moments that made up a relationship into an entity of its own? What made a family out of strangers?

The Normandy day had changed, and the dog watch was starting. The blast shutters on the observation window were open: at this gentle cruise speed, the vista of stars soaring past was visible, instead of the stark blue shift of FTL. On her way to her bunk but too keyed up to dive into sleep, Ashley tumbled onto one end of the couch that faced the window.

At the other end, someone let out a squeak, but it rasped coming out.

"Tali?" There was a face she hadn't expected. Normally, Tali was the one crew member you never needed to shoo to bed. Everyone slipped up on _something_ , but Tali's habits were fastidious. Must come with the knowledge that any neglect worsened the hand on physical frailty she'd already been dealt.

"Sorry," Tali mumbled. "I lowered the volume on my audio receptors. Trying to be quiet. I didn't hear you come in."

"Good thing it was me and not a Reaper boarding party." Ashley rubbed the last of the water from her hair. Mostly she made do with the cold showers, like everyone, but the hot water allotment was the one officer perk she never refused when it was her turn.

"I would've heard an alarm. I just can't stop thinking about tomorrow."

"Rannoch, huh?" The towel fell into her lap as Ash began finger-combing her hair. "I feel you there. You'll have to focus sooner or later. There's nothing else for it."

"I _know_. That's why I'm here and not rolling my blankets into a ball around myself."

"Your suit's specced for interplanetary vacuum. You really have blankets?"

"It's a comfort thing," Tali muttered. "I don't sleep in all this hardware unless we're on a mission. Just the undersuit."

"Right, right." Maybe it was a good thing she hadn't gone to the crew quarters and crashed. As well as Ashley knew what was at stake, she also knew Tali was holding up under a bloody lot of pressure.

"I'll go in a bit."

"I get it," Ashley offered. "If it was me and Earth, I'd be pacing a trench into the floor."

"I never really understood that idiom," Tali said, as if clutching onto the linguistic distraction. "When we wait, we stay still. It conserves energy for the crisis we're expecting."

"Well, humans weren't built that smart. We pretty much itch to get moving already."

"The salarians do the same." Tali stretched out her legs from her huddled position. "It'll be you and Earth one day soon."

Not _I hope_ or _if we survive this_ ; the conditional was plain even if neither of them spoke it aloud. Every move they made was a gamble, no matter how good Liara's intel, how relentless Shepard's diplomacy, how steady Ashley's own hand on the rifle.

"Did you want some space?" Tali's voice was polite for all that her body language remained restive. Even if quarians were better at waiting, she leaked anxiety from more than a few suit seams.

"I was gonna..." Ashley made a vague hand motion. She was used to crowds, cramped quarters, busy family homes--all her life, she'd seldom spent much time alone. Solitude was both a pressure and a desire. Then, coming a decision, she reached for the datapad she'd brought with her. "Gonna do some non-work reading."

"I'll be quiet."

"Nah." Ashley fit her feet onto the middle seat, so they overlapped Tali's booted ones. "I think there's something here that'd work for you."

"Oh?" Tilting forward, Tali waited for her to scroll down to her place in the book, and quite effortlessly, her voice quiet and measured, Ashley began to read.

  
_"We've tried each spinning space mote_  
 _And reckoned its true worth:_  
 _Take us back again to the homes of men_  
 _On the cool, green hills of Earth._

_The arching sky is calling_  
 _Spacemen back to their trade._  
 _ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!_  
 _And the lights below us fade._

_Out ride the sons of Terra,_  
 _Far drives the thundering jet,_  
 _Up leaps a race of Earthmen,_  
 _Out, far, and onward yet--_

_We pray for one last landing_  
 _On the globe that gave us birth_  
 _Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies_  
 _And the cool, green hills of Earth."_  


* * *

Closing her eyes, Liara lets the words wash over her. The cadence of Ashley's voice is as strong as it ever was, barking orders at the _Normandy_ marines.

"And she slept?"

"Right there on the observation deck couch."

She rests her hands together in her lap, looking at her own fingers, smooth and unaged. "I... haven't thought about the _Normandy_ in a while."

"It's been forty Earth years since they retired the old girl. Joker might not forgive you, but I will."

"No, I... I know, Ash," Liara hastens to answer, the old nickname falling gently from her tongue. Does it still fit Ashley, with her papery, weatherbeaten cheeks, her hair more silver than black, still swept into a severe bun at the nape of her neck?

"I remember." Ashley presses her head against the back of the chair. "You always knew. Always seemed to have that one bit of information that'd save the day. That used to piss me off."

It fits her, the nickname, just as her words bear the clipped tones of Gunnery Chief Williams. "Then you took down the Shadow Broker and..."

"Became downright insufferable?"

"Sometimes. At that point we were an order of magnitude past saving the _day_. Try saving all of sentience. So I had to appreciate your bringing out the big investigation guns."

"Duly noted." Although Liara chuckles, she hears Ashley's voice reverberate in her head, chiming with memory. _You always knew. That used to piss me off._

* * *

They had been docked at the Citadel for a full day, but Liara had yet to step foot outside the ship. She had sent off a list of requisitions for her office the approximate length of her arm, and should probably be asking after it soon. Some of the parts were highly specialised. Before that, there was always more to coordinate, research and delegate.

The sound of a new voice drew Liara to pause beside the mess, on her way back to her datafeeds. She caught sight of Garrus's silhouette against the light, his hands braced on a table. Shepard was seated to his right, similarly leaned forward, both of their attention on the speaker. From her angle of observation, Liara could not quite see him.

"She has changed, but not much. It seems quieter here." She immediately connected the guttural tremor in the voice.

"We didn't have the chance to pick up a full crew, so we made do," Shepard said. "Turns out having EDI back in charge cuts down on the need for people."

" 'She', hm?" Garrus's tone idled somewhere between thoughtful and amused. "That's new."

"The _Normandy_ always had a spirit, a personality," said their visitor. " 'She' is certainly more appropriate now that EDI is in full control of the ship." Now Liara had the identity of the third person: only one drell was likely to come on board the Normandy, after all.

"You can tell Joker that when we go up. How about the observation deck for now?" Shepard stood up. "It's almost dinnertime. Shore leave or no, there'll be a demand for these chairs in a minute."

"I remember," Thane Krios said in his rasping voice, roughened by a coughing fit that scrambled up his throat.

"Once you could be bothered to actually come up at mealtimes." Garrus straightened to his full height, but Liara did not, from her vantage, miss the way he tracked Thane out of the corner of his eye. There was no offer of support, no concern in his comment, but he observed, while Shepard turned to lead the way.

"Shepard persuaded me, in time."

"Yeah. The faces have changed since, except for, well, us." Garrus waved a hand to indicate himself and presumably Shepard. The three disappeared from Liara's view. Of course she had done her best to keep tabs on any potential allies: she had been aware that Thane had been admitted into Huerta Memorial, and written him out of that roster. If his illness was that advanced, it would be a disservice to both him and the squad to ask him to return, much as Shepard and Garrus might have valued the presence of their erstwhile comrade, as remarkable as his skills were.

 

[ ](http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww163/ashkedude/mebb2014-27/od2FINISHED.png)

 

What had been on Shepard's mind, bringing Thane on board? The previous mission six months ago, certainly. Perhaps a more nebulous note that it might be the last time, the last opportunity. The _Normandy_ would leave her berth soon, and there were no guarantees she would be able to return--in time, or at all.

The door of the observation deck whirred open behind her. Garrus said something, the drawl in his voice relaying the joke Liara could not hear. 

Shepard chortled, restrained, her mirth always fraying at the edges these days. It was Thane's husking laugh that stuck in Liara's ear: a shiver of sound barely there, a sign of amusement from someone who no doubt betrayed such sentiment rarely.

Feeling rather like an intruder, Liara retreated towards her office. The door closed on the mingling voices of the three old companions, briefly reunited.

* * *

Ashley waves a hand in front of her face before Liara realises she has drifted into a reverie and missed whatever the last piece of conversation has been.

"Aren't you half a millennium too young to be spacing out in the sun?"

"The asari believe in taking a rest when your body demands it," she ripostes. "We borrowed the word for 'overachievement' from the turians." Not quite the plain linguistic truth, but a popular idea all the same.

"This is what I meant." Ashley sighs fondly. "You and your endless trivia."

"Sorry. I got a little lost in the old days." And old worries: knowing so much _about_ people had not come without its price.

"The _Normandy_ story hour has a way of happening." Ashley shrugs. "Do you want something with it? I made iced tea for the horde screaming in the garden. There might be some left."

"In the kitchen?" Liara rises, pre-emptively. If she is too young to linger in a sunny spot, Ashley certainly isn't. "I'll get it. You think up another anecdote."

"Roger that, Doctor."

* * *

_That_ search and retrieve had turned into a clusterfuck sooner than a bunch of krogan crammed onto a turian transport. Sometimes, Ashley thought, she had trouble seeing why Shepard bothered chasing after every rumour of a surviving cruiser or inkling of relic technology. As if one more piece of dubious Prothean knowledge could... Well, she'd let Liara be the judge of that.

The husk bite on her arm wrapped in a bandage, painkillers taken and her equipment cleaned, Ashley stared at the message glowing on her omni-tool screen. It was helpfully marked "Low Priority".

Groaning, she hauled herself up from her bunk. Shepard was bedridden with a concussion, thanks to a brute claw to the helmet. So it technically fell to Ashley, as the XO, to make sure nothing was up that wouldn't come down smoothly. She could have delegated, but she was already on her way.

She keyed a link open as she made her way across the crew quarters. "EDI?"

"Yes, Lieutenant-Commander?"

"Want to tell me what this is about Starboard Observation and..."

"It seemed to me that an activity to reduce stress and bolster morale would be in order after the mission today," EDI said before Ashley could finish formulating her thought. "The message I sent was marked as a casual communication."

"A casual communication that will end in a mutiny if all those--hey!" As Ashley turned a corner, she almost collided with Tali. The quarian had her arms full of a storage case, and she looked suspiciously like she was headed the same way as Ashley. "... If all those pillows don't come back," she finished. "Uh, Tali, hold up."

"Hey, Ash." Tali tilted her head up. "Sorry, I can't see much behind this thing."

"What's in that thing, if I may ask?" _And where are you taking it?_

"I found it among the field gear," Tali said. "EDI was asking about cushions, and I remembered seeing it down there."

 _Oh, God, give me patience._ "So you took the inflatable camp pillows out for a spin."

"I was at something of an impasse," EDI added through the comm link. "The extranet suggested a great variety of communal pastimes, but we do not have the equipment for many of them. Pillows, however, are an everyday necessity."

"Unless you have to sleep in a helmet." Tali dropped the box with a muted thump. "I have a little inflatable neck cushion, though, for field conditions."

"That's nice." Ashley was, in truth, slightly torn. She should have ordered Tali to take the field equipment back down to storage and dispersed whatever crowd had already gathered in Starboard Observation. On the other hand... "EDI?"

"Yes?" Damn her perfectly even voice. How did you take an AI to task when it sounded just the same making shipwide mischief and responding to orders under fire?

"If there is _one_ pillow missing afterwards, you will find it for me. I don't even care how." You did not mess with a soldier's sleep any more than it was messed up by inevitable circumstances.

"Understood."

"So," Tali said, all curiosity. "What exactly is a 'pillow fort', and how do we build it?"

 

[ ](http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww163/ashkedude/mebb2014-27/od3almostFINISHED.png)

 

* * *

"I'm pretty sure EDI scratched that from the surveillance footage afterwards," Liara suggests once she is done laughing.

"Come on. You've hung out with soldier types long enough. As horseplay goes, rival pillow fortifications on the observation deck weren't even so bad."

"It was an outlet", Liara says. "Some part of me would have thought it was silly, but I do hope another part would've told it to sit down and keep quiet."

"Work hard, play hard." Ashley picks up the jug and pours more iced tea for both of them. "Especially since we couldn't get the usual steady stream of extranet games a lot of the time."

"There were more traditional alternatives, no?"

"One important life skill the army teaches you: all the card games known to humankind. After that, you start adapting turian ones to the human deck."

"Or more sophisticated choices," Liara says, the merest hint of glibness in her tone. "There was one occasion that stuck to my mind."

* * *

It was rare to find Starboard Observation entirely vacant. Liara settled in the corner with her weapon case and cleaning implements and began taking the Acolyte to pieces. She needed a moment out of the office, and cleaning her guns was a tangible departure from the neverending riptide of data across her displays.

When the door sounded, she glanced up. Samantha entered first, with Steve on her heels. Liara was about to offer a greeting as Samantha spoke up. "Okay, tell me already. I didn't forget a birthday or something? Some other Alliance tradition that I missed because it's my first deployment?" She dropped to sit at the end of one couch.

"If you had, I'd have left you to Mr. Vega's tender mercies," Steve said. "I would let you live it down too soon."

"That's reassuring."

He remained standing, a metal case tucked under his arm--some sort of tool kit. Liara swallowed what she'd been about to say. She ought to speak up and interrupt before the discovery of her presence became a greater interruption.

"You could weather some teasing from James. If Shepard doesn't phase you, he wouldn't stand a chance." Steve unlatched the case. "I had something to show you. There's a shipboard rumour that you play a mean game of chess."

"It's been known to happen." Samantha leaned forward, her expression easing into curiosity.

"Seems to me that an expert should have a proper board."

"Well... I did get one on the Citadel."

"I said a _proper_ board, no? Something that you can hold in your hand, Miss Traynor, was that how it was?" Steve's voice gentled, and some significance echoed in his words, because Samantha laughed a breathy little laugh.

"You didn't."

By way of an answer, he opened the case. Her hand flew to her mouth, but it did not muffle the surprised peal of laughter. Liara sat still, too late now to make a discreet exit. Samantha reached out to pick up something from the box, a metallic piece about the length of a finger, and held it up with great care. It looked like a strip of scrap metal, smoothed and twisted along its length, crowned with a bolthead attached carefully at the top.

 

[ ](http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww163/ashkedude/mebb2014-27/od4FINISHED.png)

 

"I did," said Steve. "Or rather I made do. Not a lot of spare materials on the _Normandy_ , especially if you don't want to resort to omni-gel, but I'm a little old-fashioned. I like to work with my hands." He set the box down on the seat next to her. "It's not chalcedony and... what was the other thing?"

"I'm never telling Shepard another personal anecdote, if she's that terrible at keeping secrets."

"I confess I asked." He held up his hands in the human gesture of placation.

Samantha set the peculiar chess piece back into the box, leaned forward and hugged him. "Thanks. For this, not for nosing around."

"In this case, one led to the other."

As Liara turned her eye down to the disassembled gun on her lap, something seemed to settle in place in her mind, lock and hold fast. Here she was, eavesdropping, but she'd raise her voice in a moment. She was an unknown party to so many conversations across every channel of communication she only could access. Maybe, if she allowed herself the twist in that thought, this conversation balanced out the others.

* * *

"She must still have that board," Ashley muses. "In that same banged-up toolbox."

"Don't you still have that turian rifle Garrus gave you once? The one that 'kicked like a mule'?" Liara sips at the chilled tea. Straight out of the jug, it's strong and tangy. Apparently the grandchildren season it liberally with sugar, but Liara likes the slight bite to it.

"With the custom grip and everything." Ashley leans back with evident satisfaction. "I learned to handle the recoil. After I told Vakarian to shut up about it two dozen times. Humans don't soak up impact the way turians do."

"Never let anatomical differences come in the way of your one-upping. That is Garrus for you."

"Always."

The silence lasts for a minute or three, both of them focused on some inner travel, or simply the warmth of the lengthening light. Memory colours the air as golden as the sun, as verdant as the garden.

* * *

Liara knew she could not stay in the cabin, curled up on top of the covers, watching the light from her monitors play across the chrome of the ceiling in muddled variations of orange and blue. Out across planets and star systems, her agents were hunting their leads, clinching deals, salvaging whatever information that might help their cause. Any of those fragments might be the crucial piece to a puzzle. A trade gone well would win them a few more ships, troops or resources.

One planet was not a defeat. She knew that. She had seen enough of them fall.

She should have been out by her console, directing and sifting and coalescing that data. Glyph spun around her office, tending to the menial parts of her work that did not require her personal attention.

Whole star systems on her maps had been conquered. Even that had not signalled the end of their efforts. It had just added to the reasons to persist in them.

None of those systems had been Parnitha. None of those planets Thessia.

Outside in the mess, the lights dimmed. The night cycle was starting, which meant she'd sat here for at least two hours. Feeling her joints protest, as if the weight of the grief were physically debilitating, Liara collected her pile of datapads marked "urgent" and forced herself to leave the office. She couldn't deal with the constant susurrus of data: it seemed pointless, and her own attempts to plumb it for meaning equally as mindless.

The foundations of the universe had shifted beneath her feet. There were Reapers covering the skies of Thessia, sweeping over her cities, culling her people.

Let it be swift, she found herself thinking. It wouldn't be.

The tipping point of all their struggles had tilted away from them and dropped them off the edge, into tumbling freefall. Sooner or later, she would hit bottom. For now, she felt her heart lurching whenever she stopped, not knowing whether to stagger or to steady itself.

The Starboard Observation door opened at her approach. The shutters were closed against the light-bleed of FTL, and the whole space lay twilit, save for the glow of someone's omni-tool in the corner. It took Liara a moment to grasp that the couch where she'd been about to sit was occupied. Shepard, leaned in the nook between the back and the armrest, a cushion tucked under her head to keep it from lolling back. She actually seemed to be asleep, if lightly: Liara's movement made her stir.

"Keep it down." Ashley looked up from her omni-tool. Even in the warm orange shimmer, she looked weary, her hair a mess of strands escaped from the bun. "She just went to sleep. The rest of 'em might not appreciate being woken, either."

"The rest... oh." As her eyes adjusted, Liara could take better stock of the room. Next to Shepard, Tali was curled up into a ball on her side, hands folded under her chin, taking up one middle seat and some of the next one. That didn't seem to bother Samantha, nodded off with her arms around her knees, a dimmed datapad still humming next to her.

Gently Liara laid a hand on Shepard's arm. "Go back to sleep. Please."

"She gives you any lip about that, tell her the offer to knock her out still stands," came Garrus's voice from one of the armchairs, near to where Ashley's omni-tool made its circle of light in the room.

"Mmhm," said Shepard, but her breathing evened and deepened again.

Liara made her way up to Ashley, stepping past James's legs spilling out at the far end of the couch. He, too, appeared sound asleep, and through the numbness in her mind, a spark of humour stirred. If the lighting had been better, that unselfconscious sprawl would have been worth an omni-tool snapshot.

"Why are you all here?" she whispered, pulling a simple chair for herself, careful not to scrape it on the floor.

Ashley huffed softly. "Sometimes you ask pretty dumb questions for such a smart person."

Liara let her gaze drift across the tableau: Shepard, Tali, Samantha, then James. Steve, in a chair in the corner, bent towards Garrus so they could hold a quiet conversation. Ash, her chair pushed a little away from Garrus's.

"All right," she admitted. "I'll give you that one."

Of course they would all gravitate here, after what had happened today. Wasn't it where her feet had guided her, too, when the silence of her office had almost overwhelmed her?

"You okay?" Ash was watching her, steady as the smooth flight of the ship beneath and around them. Liara returned the look, as shadowed as both of their faces were. Ashley looked away first. "Yeah, never mind. There's a dumb question right back at you."

"It's all right." She meant, _I know why you asked._

"Come here." It was neither a question nor a request, hovering somewhere in between. Ashley's voice was sure all the same, her hand open, held out to Liara.

Liara raised a brow. The armchair was comfortable, if not quite broad enough for two. Had she truly come here to work, after today? After everything?

Ashley cleared her throat. Liara set down her datapads and wedged herself between Ash and the armrest, her feet poking out over the corner of the chair. "Sorry," she muttered, because _sorry_ was a byword for something she did not have the faculty to say yet.

Saying nothing, Ashley wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The omni-tool around her other forearm switched off, the holograph interface fading away. There was only the sound of Garrus and Steve talking, the hum of the ventilation, the distant thrum of the engines. The ship cradled them all, as solid a sense of safety as the closeness of her friend.

At some point afterwards, Liara slept at last.

 

[ ](http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww163/ashkedude/mebb2014-27/od5FINISHED.png)

 

* * *

The day tips sharply towards twilight in the equatorial latitude of the colony. Liara stirs when the lamp in the room switches on with the dwindling natural illumination. 

Thessia, in memory, can still jab her under the ribs.

"Funny that," Ashley says from the depths of her own chair. "I always thought that Starboard Observation was a place where I'd go when I needed a break. Someplace to forget about the war for a while. Don't know if I started the habit, but it did spread, right?"

"It did." Liara sits up straight. "You were there a lot, now that I think about it."

"There was a lot of war to go through." But Ashley chortles.

"I suppose we all had our reasons."

"Hmm?"

"I rarely went there to forget. I wanted to _remember_." Liara has learned and forgotten much, but this one lesson she strives to keep pinned in her mind.

Ashley's expression verges on puzzled, but she waits for Liara to continue.

"I was the Shadow Broker. Before that, I was a researcher. You develop a certain way of looking at the world. Everything is data. Everything is connections, motivations, weak points, comparisons. And... that everything includes every _one_."

"Don't remind me of all the things I suspect you know about me but never mention."

"That's why _I_ needed the reminder." Liara puts a careful hand on the armrest of Ash's chair, within reach. "I know about you, but it's more important that I know _you_."

"That makes a kind of sense." Ashley nudges the side of her hand with her own. "When you turn it sideways and hold it up to the light."

"I imagine," Liara says, looping a finger through Ashley's, "that it was what kept me honest."

"Past tense. 'Course, by now you must be crooked as a volus trade contract."

"I would prefer another metaphor. Perhaps 'as a mountain pine'? Your Earth poets had some remarkable lines in that vein."

"Well." Ashley's fingers fold through hers, and something of her old strength dwells in their grip. "That's a bit outside my expertise, but give me a sec. I'll remember one of those for you."

In the garden, the shadows creep across the grass, turning green to blue, and the smell of dew-laden trees floats up to the wide window.

Inside, one old friend reads a poem to another, come a long way for a reunion.

 

[ ](http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww163/ashkedude/mebb2014-27/od1finished.png)

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> 'Green Hills of Earth' is, of course, by Robert A. Heinlein, and was the dev team's original choice for Ashley to recite in ME1. It seemed a fitting piece of near-canon to salvage into a fic.


End file.
